24 Responses to Him that Pisseth against the Wall – Part 2

1. Duane says:

   September 2, 2011 at 9:10 am

   Claude,

   Again, I want to thank you for taking up my paper and even more for taking it seriously. At this point I want to make a couple of rather high level observations about the paper. I hope to address your concerns and interpretation in appropriate detail latter in the day. Because your interpretation is well within the mainstream of both contemporary scholarly discussion and Rabbinic tradition, it will not be easy to refute. In fact, the best I will be able to do is to sow a little uncertainty here and there. I have an appointment this morning that will keep me away from my computer, my paper and your post for several hours. I want to make sure I do justice to your criticism. At that time will try respond to any other commenters also. This is project that cannot be done satisfactorily within my morning schedule. Note: I wrote much of this comment last night before I saw your most recent post. I wanted to have some kind of response before I left home for the morning.

   For now, let me indicate the larger scholarly context of my paper. The paper and the research project of which it is the first published instalment was inspired in large part by Burke Long (“The Effect of Divination upon Israelite Literature,” JBL 92 [1973] 489-97) and Wayne Horowitz and Victor Hurowitz, “Urim and Thummim in Light of a Psephomancy Ritual from Assur (LKA 137),” JANES(CU) 2 (1992) 95-115 and rather heavily by Scott Noegel (Nocturnal Ciphers: The Allusive Language of Dreams in the Ancient Near East [AOS 89; New Haven: American Oriental Society, 2007]. These works are citing in my paper but likely were not given the importance they deserve within my larger project. I see the “Pisser” paper as part of a project that will, as currently envisioned, result in at least four additional papers exploring the influence of Mesopotamian divination on various portions of the Hebrew Bible where such influence is not generally acknowledged. Frequent readers of my blog have had, over the last couple of years, several hints of how these papers might unfold. Two of the additional papers in the project are well on their way to completion. These papers and overall project was delayed by two other somewhat related publication projects. One of these projexts is completely behind me (my four chapters in Akkadian Prayers and Hymns: A Reader (Alan Lenzi, ed.; Ancient Near East Monographs – Monografías sobre el Antiguo Cercano Oriente, Society of Biblical Literature, Centro de Estudios de Historia del Antiguo Oriente series 3, Ehud Ben Zvi and Roxana Flammini eds.; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011) and other is in the final (I hope) rewrite stage (“Portentous Birds Flying West: On the Mesopotamian origin of Homeric bird-divination,” conditionally accepted by JANER).

   One of the central problems with my research program is that the Hebrew Bible, notably in Dt. 18:10-11, explicitly rejects most forms of divination. This prohibition no doubt had some effect on what else was said and how it was said in the ancient Hebrew texts that have come down to us. Exactly what that effect was is not so clear. So, unambiguous direct evidence for the influence of Mesopotamian (or Egyptian or [neo-] Hittite for that matter) divination is general lacking.

   When we think of the “context of scripture” we tend to think of the historical, literary, legal, ritual and mythological context of the Bible. But that context was much broader and more subtle. Oppenheim estimated that about half of the tablets in the Ashurbanipal Library deal with divination of one sort or another. The content of those tablets, if not the tablets themselves, almost certainly was part of the context in which the biblical authors worked. Now if one believes that the parallel between the omens about dreaming of urinating against the wall in the Assyrian Dream Book and the Hebrew trope under discussion is at best fortuitous, as I think you do, then my thesis has no chance. If one believes that there is some kind of intertextuality, no matter how slight, involved, that intertectuality calls for an explanation. At root my paper was an attempt to provide such an explanation.

   This brings me to what I see as the most important statement in my pisser paper. It is a methodological statement in the unnumbered first footnote at the very beginning of the paper, the one in which I give thank you, Claude, for your helpful comments on the blog post where I first played around with the idea behind the paper.

   “Some may find this article overly speculative. All underdetermined questions will have significant elements of speculation in any proposed answer. All other attempts to explain משׁתין בקיר suffer from this same malady. One approach that is well suited to such underdetermined questions is to be certain that all possible solutions are on the table and then attempt to assign probabilities to each of them. It is in the spirit of that methodology that I present this article. (699)”

   Another thing you might find abnormally interesting is that the working title for the paper was, “משׁתין בקיר – An Echo of Divination in Biblical Hebrew.” It was a CBQ referee supported by the general editor who suggested that I change the title to “’Pisser against a Wall’: An Echo of Divination in Biblical Hebrew.” The referee and editor thought the revised title would get more search engine hits. 🙂

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   • Claude Mariottini says:

     September 2, 2011 at 9:56 am

     Duane,

     Thank you for your comment to my post. There are several things that I hope you will understand after reading my post.

     1. I believe your paper was well researched and presents a very plausible interpretation of the Hebrew phrase. If my post disagreed with your conclusions, it was nothing personal, but only a matter of scholarly differences on matters of interpretation.

     2. It is very clear that divination was practiced in ancient Israel. The laws against divination in Deuteronomy stand as a testimony that people practiced divination in Israel. You do not legislate against a practice if that practice is non-existent. My point was that I did not see an issue with divination behind that Hebrew expression.

     3. I welcome your views on this issue because this is what scholars do: present new ideas to understand old problems and, as I said in my post, you interpretation is unique.

     Again, my post reflects a matter of scholarly difference on how the Biblical text should be interpreted, nothing more, nothing less.

     I value the intellectual discussion we have on issues of mutual interest.

     Claude Mariottini

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     • Duane says:

       September 2, 2011 at 10:06 am

       Claude, I never thought otherwise. Now off to my appointment.

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2. jskipfam says:

   September 2, 2011 at 10:39 am

   Claude,
   I only had time to briefly scan this and don’t know when I can do a full reading of it.
   That being said, is this essentially the same as what probably gave rise to calling a woman a b***h? Do you consider these things to be similar with the pisser being male, of course?
   Thanks for dealing with dumb questions.

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3. Andrew Sturt says:

   September 2, 2011 at 4:02 pm

   Surely this need not be a case of either/or. Both your views have significant merit, and both could have fed into the force behind the term. The indirect reference to a dog would make the term especially derogatory. The similarity to the Assyrian urination omina and the implications of that could easily be understood as adding a shade of meaning to the expression in question where, in the case of David for example, he was not just killing the men, but effectively ending their lineage. So, while the reference to “him who pisseth against the wall” may not have meant David was specifically targeting those who wanted to propagate, he certainly put an effective end to any propagation.

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4. Duane says:

   September 2, 2011 at 5:30 pm

   Claude,

   Now that the rest of my day is mine, let me comment in more detail. Just to reinforce what you said, this “reflects a matter of scholar different on how the Biblical text should be interpreted, nothing more, nothing less.” I find these kinds of discussions great fun and I’m glad that you are providing the opportunity and the forum for the discussion.

   Before I go too far, if any of your readers would like an electronic copy of my paper (and there aren’t too many requests), they can email me at duane(at)telecomtally(dot)com and I will be happy to send one along.

   Let me start with a simple confession. If I didn’t suspect that there is some level of intertextuality between the Hebrew trope as used in those six verses in the Hebrew Bible and the omens I cite from Tablet 7:3’-19’ (Κ. 6267 Rev. I:3’-19’) of the Assyrian Dream Book, I would agree with you with little or no argument. But I do think there is a likelihood of some level of intertextuality between the two. And that belief motivates my interpretation.

   Let me try then to motivate the claim that there is some kind of intertextuality, however limited, between the two sets of texts. I know that none of these arguments result in anything close to certainty and that a few of them are far more hypothetical than truly evidential. Let’s start with a hypothetical observation. If something that read in English translation, “If (in a dream) his urine flows in front of his penis (onto) a wall of a street, he will have sons (Κ. 6267 Rev. I:6’-8’ as reconstructed)” were found in the Hebrew Bible, I would be very surprised if the history of interpretation of our trope didn’t include reference to such a saying. The same would be true if it were to show up in an ancient Hebrew or even Aramaic epigraphic text. So is the same true of a text in a different language and from Mesopotamia? Truthfully, it isn’t so clear that my hypothetical observation holds in this case. Certainly some form of intertextuality is possible. But possible and probable are far from the same things. So what can I do to raise the probability to an acceptable level? Well first, I can point out, as you do, “that divination was practiced in ancient Israel.” In fact, we know that some, but not all, forms dream divination were practiced and allowable in ancient Israel (see Daniel 2:1-49 for example) and that other types were not allowable even if practiced (Jer. 23:25 for example). The Daniel account is particularly significant for our considerations because Daniel interpreted the dream of the Mesopotamian (Babylonian) king Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel’s dream interpretation was given in the context of the efforts of Mesopotamian diviners. From this I think it reasonable to conclude that at least some of the authors of the Hebrew Bible knew about Mesopotamian dream divination. They didn’t necessarily like it but they know about it. Just for the record the Akkadian dialect of the Assyrian Dream Book is what scholars call Standard Babylonian and not Assyrian. In addition I could point to the many cases where scholars like Burke Long, Scott Noegel and others (see my earlier comment for references) see intertextual relationships of various kinds between Akkadian divination texts and Biblical texts.

   Now there are a couple of details. I wish I had more in this department. First, the Akkadian word translated “wall” in these omens (igāru) means house or garden wall as does Hebrew word קיר. They both have almost identical semantic ranges. Neither the Akkadian nor the Hebrew words are commonly (ever?) used to refer to a fortification wall. Second, words for “urine” and “one that urinates” in both languages are direct cognates. These philological observations are as not strong as I would like but the parallel limited semantic ranges of the lexemes for wall is at least supportive of some kind of intertextuality.

   Is this enough to support a high level of certainty concerning an intertextual relationship between our texts? No. But, I think it is enough to make it hard to claim with confidence that there isn’t such a relationship.

   You do a good job of supporting your argument assuming that there is no intertextuality between the Akkadian and the Hebrew. But if there is such intertextuality, it needs to be accounted for. That’s what my paper tried to do. Of course, there may be other ways of accounting for it. If the apparent parallel is just that, only apparent, then I think a critique of my paper requires a discussion of why the parallel it is only apparent. My problem is that if a drop dead argument for an interpretation such as the one you propose existed, there would be not room in the interpretative space for my suggestion or that of Noth, Burch Ackroyd Youngblood and the Rabbis of the first part (but not the last part) of b. B. Bat 19 (adult male humans without dogs as an intermediary) or that of Julius Lewy, Edouard Dhorme, Caquot, de Robert, E. Judah and Midr. 1 Sam 23:11 (young boy, see 706, note 28 of my paper), or that of Samuel Iwry who thinks we should read משׁתין בקור, which he renders into Modern Hebrew something like “pisser in a well,” rather than משׁתין בקיר, “pisser against a wall.” For this reason I needed to show that interpretations such as yours were not bullet proof. I think I did that much but no more.

   When I first saw it while researching my paper, I found John Gray’s comment which you quoted interesting but, unless I wrongly read him or he revised his opinion from his 1963 edition (p. 307, perhaps the pagination is different between the editions), he did not clearly hold that the trope has anything to do with dogs. Humorously, Birch (NIB, II, 1168) calls the phrase a “euphemism”(!) for males, again without reference to dogs.

   I end this comment with a story about my paper. When I received the offprints of the paper I gave one to a friend who is a Semitist specializing in Syriac but who knows a good deal of Akkadian and Hebrew. About a week later I received an email with “Pisser” in the subject line and a text reading, “QED, you nailed it.” I immediately replied more of less as follows, “Please wait a few days to make sure your body is clean of whatever you have been smoking and then reread my paper. If you still have a QED delusion, I recommend that you seek professional help without delay.”

   PS: Andrew raises an interesting point. Unless I’m missing something, I don’t think both positions can be correct if one tries to take both positions within the same interpretive time frame, but it is clear that, should there be any merit in my understanding, over time the interpretation the I propose certainly gave way to interpretations like those Claude suggests.

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   • Andrew says:

     September 3, 2011 at 3:33 pm

     Duane,
     First off, I’d love to see a copy of your paper. I’ll email you so you have my address. Secondly, can you help me understand what you mean by “the same interpretive time frame”? I’m affraid I am unfamiliar with that expression.
     Thank you,
     Andrew

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     • Claude Mariottini says:

       September 6, 2011 at 9:03 am

       Andrew,

       Read Duane’s paper. You will enjoy his scholarship and gain a better understanding of his interpretation.

       Claude Mariottini

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   • Claude Mariottini says:

     September 6, 2011 at 9:00 am

     Dear Duane,

     First of all, let me apologize for the delay in answering your comment. I spent the weekend doing things with the family, now that the summer is coming to an end.

     Second, let me say again that I enjoyed reading your paper and working on my post. I have been planning to work on this topic for a long time. I made the decision to do so at this time because summer was coming to an end and once classes begin, time will be at a premium again.

     I am the first to acknowledge that intertextuality is a reality that cannot be denied when one reads the Bible and many of the literature of the Ancient Near East. After all, ancient Israel did not live in isolation, but had contact with many other nations of the ancient world.

     It is also true that words and phrases can go from one language to another, sometimes words have the same meaning in the other language, sometimes words and phrases are modified to meet cultural needs in the receptor language. I am quite sure that the same happened in the case of the pisser against the wall.

     The point of my paper was to say that, in my view and probably in the view of other scholars, the interpretation you proposed does not explain the intent of David’s words against Nabal.

     My own view, that the Hebrew expression is an obscenity that addresses a male in a derogatory way may not be acceptable to many people. If the expression is a euphemism for males, the expression still carries a derogatory way because of its association with dogs.

     Any way, I am glad you wrote your paper because scholars now have one more view to explore in trying to understand this mysterious phrase.

     A few days ago, I received an email from Rabbi Mordecai Schreiber. He read my post on mashtin ba’kir and wrote this: “One more example of how far removed we are from the biblical idioms, and while we think we really understand them, there is so
     much more to explore.”

     Duane, keep on writing and exploring hidden meanings in the Hebrew Bible. I do appreciate our dialogue on issues of mutual interest.

     Claude Mariottini

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5. Caleb says:

   September 8, 2011 at 12:50 am

   While your papers are both undoubtedly well thought out. They are approached from an English speaker’s point of view and therefore doomed to misunderstand the text. As a native English speaker I can sympathize with the western understanding of this particular idiom but it is far more simple than you are trying to make it. In Semitic languages every noun has a gender. The male member (dare I say penis?) in both Hebrew and Arabic is male. Therefore, when referring to IT in one of these tongues one must use the masculine pronoun “he”. This passage is saying he will cut off the man’s penis. Literally “he” (that) which pisseth against the wall.

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   • Claude Mariottini says:

     September 8, 2011 at 10:37 am

     Caleb,

     Both Duane and I know about gender in Hebrew. In Hebrew the verb in these passages is a participle masculine, but your interpretation does not explain the context in which the expression “mashtin ba’kir” appears. If you read carefully the passages where “mashtin ba’kir” appears, you will discover that they refer to the elimination of progeny, not the cutting of the male appendage.

     Claude Mariottini

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6. Caleb says:

   September 8, 2011 at 8:56 pm

   Doing so would cut off future progeny as one would no longer be able to reproduce. Further it is more likely a reference to removal of the male member or any ability to produce further offspring (which is perfectly in line with the text) than calling them dogs by simply mentioning dogs in some adjoined part of the text.

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   • Claude Mariottini says:

     September 8, 2011 at 9:48 pm

     Caleb,

     You have to look at the contexts of the passages. Elijah’s prophecy about Ahab’s house in 1 Kings 21:21 was fulfilled in the massacre of Ahab’s house by Jehu. 2 Kings 9:8-9 says: “For the whole house of Ahab shall perish: and I will cut off from Ahab him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel: And I will make the house of Ahab like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah.” What happened to Ahab also happened to Jeroboam and to Baasha.

     Jehu did not cut the penises of Ahab’s seventy sons: he cut their heads (2 Kings 10:7-8). In addition, “Jehu killed all who remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel– all his great men, close friends, and priests– leaving him no survivors” (2 Kings 10:11).

     Your interpretation has no basis on the biblical text.

     Claude Mariottini

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7. Paul Grioli says:

   September 29, 2011 at 6:56 pm

   could it be that the expression “he who pisseth upon a wall” refers to any ABLE BODY man? this is the way it seems to me in the over-all context where these expressions are found.
   Your thoughts would be appreciated.
   thanking you in advance for your replay.
   Paul

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   • Claude Mariottini says:

     September 29, 2011 at 9:32 pm

     Paul,

     It could be understood this way, but I doubt it. The reference is to males of one’s house. Among those males there could have been some who were not “able body men” but they should also be killed.

     Claude Mariottini

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8. MoPro says:

   December 1, 2011 at 3:58 pm

   Boys, boys, boys…we’re talking about piss here. No need to get bent. A protracted argument is really doing no more than pissing into the wind…

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   • Claude Mariottini says:

     December 17, 2011 at 7:41 pm

     MoPro,

     Some people have strong views on this issue. That explains the debate and exchange of ideas.

     My blog has moved to my new web page. Visit the new site of my blog, read my post today, then subscribe to my blog and receive all my posts as they are published. My new site is Dr. Mariottini.

     Claude Mariottini

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9. Pingback: “Him that Pisseth against the Wall” | Claude Mariottini - Professor of Old Testament

10. Janice Veramay says:

    March 27, 2014 at 10:39 pm

    There is an even deeper meaning here. Why do dogs urinate on walls? Answer: to mark territory and claim it as one’s own. In Scripture, sins are often translated as “trespasses,” a term for property violations. One who urinates against a wall would then be an ungodly person who trespasses or violates the property of God and His people by showing no respect for His Laws or promises (which included The Promised Land or property of Israel). But more than being a mere violation of property rights, a trespass is a boundary violation against the property or integrity of a human soul and the Spirit of God and in turn, this sin or trespass reduces a man to a beast caring for nothing but indulgence or relief of mere physical appetites, like Nebuchadnezzar, whose flagrant, beastly disregard of God caused him to live in actuality as a beast for seven years, a type of tribulation if you will.

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    • Claude Mariottini says:

      March 31, 2014 at 2:07 pm

      Janice,

      Thank you for your comment. Your deeper meaning seems to go beyond of what the text intends.

      Claude Mariottini

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    September 18, 2014 at 5:50 pm

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13. Jim Phillips says:

    December 27, 2022 at 1:46 am

    I believe the term “him that pisseth against the wall” refers to human males, since women would not be able to do so. Having lived in rural Turkey, I have witnessed the action on more than one occasion. Also, I’m not sure in biblical times, the word would have been considered obscene.

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    • Claude Mariottini says:

      January 20, 2023 at 8:46 am

      Jim,

      There is no question that the expression refers to male. However, as I wrote in my post, I believe the expression was used as a way to offend people.

      I visited Turkey several years ago and truly enjoyed my experience there.

      Claude Mariottini

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